The Brochure on Life's Unscripted Emergencies

Horses are big strong animals, but gosh they can be so delicate at the same time.  Either an injury or perhaps a colic can happen at any time.  Colic can kill a horse.

Today I’m going to talk about the emergencies that come up in our lives.  Big things.  Little things.  Life happens and sometimes our lives get derailed.  Temporarily.  Or maybe not.  How do we react?  How do we deal with emergencies?  

No one teaches you how to deal with emergencies, at least no one taught me anything.  I’ve learned mostly by example, and I’ve learned how to react better for self-preservation.  Emergencies can wreak havoc with your mental state.  I mean of course they do.  But there is a better way to deal with an emergency.  Try to stay calm.  Try to work the problem.  I have to say that if anything I’ve learned by example.  One friend Jean was someone I met at the barn, and I watched as she dealt with issues as they came up.  The barn, where are horse is, is all about emergencies.  Some small, some bigger.  But I’ll get to that a bit later.  Learning to deal with any emergency is a good skill set to have.  

First, I’m going to talk about a friend of mine who experienced a flood in her home very recently. She texted me the other day after we had some unexpected rain, and told me that her whole place flooded.  Now first of all the rain that we had that day wasn’t close to the heaviest we’ve had in the last month or so, and she doesn’t live up against a hillside.  I’ve been to her house now and I’m still not entirely sure how this all happened.  Where did the water come from? But a lot of water came flowing through her backyard area, through a fence made of cinder blocks and wood, and then into all the rooms she occupies.  Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, the whole place.  It’s a multi-unit place.  Hers is in the back up against a small backyard of sorts.  It doesn’t appear that anyone else’s unit flooded.  The neighborhood area is mostly flat.  You hear about these flash flood warnings, at least we do here.  But I’ve never seen anything materialize.  But now I’ve learned it’s very possible.  

Now I’ve had experience with flooded living areas.  My brother-in-law’s apartment flooded years ago when a bathroom pipe burst suddenly.  I think it was a Sunday night.  Just when you’re getting ready to fall asleep and try to start the week out right.  He called me, as we were living upstairs and told me the pipe had burst.  Bill was still at work.  I remember the fire department showed up.  I still laugh because I got dressed and went downstairs and as I was walking down the hall, a fireman walked past me.  I thought about what I could bring from my apartment that might help, and so I grabbed a role of paper towels.  The fireman looked at me with a glint in his eye and said, “You’re going to need more than that.”  I walked towards the apartment and there was already water in the hallway outside my brother-in-law’s front door.  Water had already spread through the apartment.  It was a mess.  Yeah, my roll of paper towels would have just picked up a speck of it all.

What I found out was that even though some things didn’t actually get wet, like the clothes hanging in the closet, they were still basically a goner.  Those companies that take care of things like this brought out their big fans and all the water that could be sucked up was, but the lingering heaviness of water was still there in the air for a good amount of time.  So anything soft like those clothes and soft upholstered furniture end up being fertile ground for mold.  Everything in the apartment would have to go.  It’s a pretty tough situation.  Then the walls usually have to be opened up and replaced because the water seeps up into the walls and grows mold as well. At the time we had three rabbits, house rabbits, in our apartment, and my brother-in-law had three as well.  We ended up taking his three into our one bedroom apartment but no we couldn’t put all six together.  It was quite the menagerie believe me.  Bunny Central! My brother-in-law had to find other accommodations. He didn’t feel like there was enough space left for him.    

Floods are not an easy thing to fix.  I feel bad for my friend because she has some time to go before her life returns to normal.  I’ve been doing what I can for my friend.  I went over there on the weekend to see the damage and helped her pack up some clothes.  Now I’m making calls for her and I might go over again and help her pack up some more.  It’s kind of an all hands on deck situation.  What would you do if you were alone and overwhelmed with something like this?  

Now, if you’re going to talk about living with emergencies, let me talk about living with my husband who is the Type 1 diabetic. When I first met Bill, he told me that he was diabetic and he asked me if I was OK with that. I really appreciated the question and the concern. At the time I thought I knew a lot about diabetes. I mean what is there to know, right? It’s a problem with your blood glucose and there’s some reason why your glucose isn’t regulated and I knew that there was something called insulin and I knew that it was something that could be controlled. I’m sure I knew a few other facts as well. So I said yes I know about diabetes and no it’s not a problem. Today 30 years later, I’m still learning about diabetes and I can tell you that what I knew then is a tiny speck of what I’ve learned over the years.  Really there’s so much to learn about diabetes and even the differences between Type 1 and Type 2.  

Now let me explain for those of you that don’t know the difference because a lot of people kind of know or think they know but they don’t really know. Type 1 diabetes is what is called insulin-dependent diabetes and that means that your pancreas does not produce any insulin for your body. Insulin is what helps regulate your blood glucose level. Why is that important? So if you eat sugar or you eat something that turns into sugar like a carbohydrate it’s going to raise your blood sugar. And if your blood sugar goes too high then you’re going to get sick and you could even die if it continues so Type 1 diabetics are insulin dependent and they have to take insulin every day throughout the day.  And they also have to watch their glucose levels. Now, Type 2 is where a person’s pancreas does produce some insulin but not a normal person’s level so they still have to worry about a lot of the same things and they have to maintain their glucose monitoring, and sometimes they have to take insulin, but they’re not as dependent on insulin as Type 1 patients are. Type 1 is often called Juvenile diabetes and Type 2 is often called adult onset diabetes because of when most people would be diagnosed with each type. OK so that being said diabetes is a disease that is chronic.  It can be controlled if you monitor it every day throughout the day and you balance a lot of different things. But it’s complicated. There’s a lot of new technology now that there wasn’t when my husband was first diagnosed. He was diagnosed when he was in college and so he’s been diabetic for over 50 years. In the diabetic world that’s a long time. Is it always easy to monitor yourself and control yourself every day of your life 24/7?  No, it’s not.  Sometimes people don't really get that part. They say, Oh, it's easy to control it. No, it's not. You try it.

What emergencies have we had?  How do emergencies factor into my life?  As is the case with anyone with a chronic disease, certain things can really cause a big problem fast.  Technology has come a long ways in helping people with diabetes.  When Bill was first diagnosed he was given insulin made from pigs and testing his blood sugar with his urine, which wasn’t nearly as effective or timely as today’s readings are because you test your blood directly.  There’s a delay in testing urine because it’s not as real time as blood is. Now he has a device called a CGM or continuous glucose monitor that continually is monitoring his blood glucose levels and even can tell him when the trend is heading up or down.  I don't know how it does that, but it's really, really fascinating.  He doesn’t have to continually prick his finger either.  If it’s going down, he needs to address that quickly, otherwise he could pass out, or worse.  Now self-preservation being what it is, he can generally tell when he’s starting to head towards a low blood sugar.  He’s had a lifetime of feeling them coming on and usually he doesn’t need the device to tell him.  But once I saw things go too far.  I was waiting for him to finish his shift at work and he ended up making his way over to me.  As he approached I started talking to him but he wasn’t answering me.  It was nighttime so I couldn’t really see his face that well.  I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t answering me.  Once I was up next to him I realized.  His blood sugar was really low.  I went over and grabbed something that we had, a bottle of chocolate milk in the cooler.  I handed him the bottle but didn’t realize that he was so low he couldn’t unscrew the cap.  Wow, this was really serious.  In all our years together I had never experienced anything like this before, and thankfully never have since.  I normally would have left to go home but for some reason I decided to stay and wait for him.  Once he regained normalcy, he kept asking me why I had stayed.  I couldn’t really tell him.  I guess I must have had a sixth sense.  I hate to think what would have happened to him if I hadn’t been there.  

He also has an insulin pump which gives him a small amount of insulin every few minutes, just like a pancreas would.  That’s called a basal rate.  And when he eats something he can program the pump to give himself a bolus, which is a specific one-time amount of insulin for that meal. So no more shots! The technology now is just so much better and has helped to improve his health, that’s for sure.  

With a disease like diabetes you need to be prepared for anything and so traveling means we don’t travel light.  No, diabetics don’t travel light, or they shouldn’t.  Insulin pump supplies, CGM supplies, alcohol prep pads, syringes (just in case), and insulin of course.  Insulin pump and CGMs have to be changed every so many days with specific sensors or cartridges, etc., so you need to have all those bits and pieces with you.  Sometimes there is a failure of the equipment and you need to change the equipment and restart things to keep it all going.  Again, this is all vitally important to his health.  Insulin needs to be kept cool so if we’re driving, we take the cooler too.  If we’re flying that’s another story.  

And then of course there’s the barn.  Horses are big strong animals, but gosh they can be so delicate at the same time.  Either an injury or perhaps a colic can happen at any time.  Colic can kill a horse if it’s not addressed immediately, and so many a barn visit has been derailed by a sick horse.  Then it’s calling the vet, turning on lights if it’s nighttime, finding a trailer perhaps to take the horse to the hospital and providing support to the owner.  There are also barn emergencies like broken water pipes, broken waterers in the stalls, kind of like a horse drinking fountain that can flood the stall, and other disasters.  We’ve even had a fire once and a big wind storm that blew off part of a roof or two.  Again, it’s all hands on deck when something like this happens.  And often when there’s a local fire and another equestrian area needs to be evacuated, our center has taken in those horses to put in empty stalls.  That’s when I’ve been called to help fill water buckets and the like.  Regarding barn emergencies, I learned a lot from watching my friend Jean.  She seemed to have a calm sense about her and a good way of assessing the problem.  I always wanted her to be around when something bad happened.  And I’ve used that knowledge to translate into other emergencies. 

What I’ve learned about emergencies is that it’s a problem solving opportunity.  It’s easy to feel an increase in adrenaline but it’s important to try to stay calm and focus on solving the problem.  It’s also important if you are on the sidelines to be sensitive to those directly involved in the emergency.  Is there help you can provide or are there already enough people helping?  Too many people can get into the way.  You might be well-meaning but you might also be complicating the situation.  Provide support when needed or wanted but then step away, and follow up afterwards.  Of course with my husband I’m always checking on him to make sure he’s feeling his best.  That’s what a supportive spouse is here for, right?  I admit, I also try to hold off any emergencies from happening with him whenever possible.  I’m not always successful, but it’s a work in progress.  

How do you handle emergencies and what could you do better?  It’s a conversation worth having, at least with yourself.  

Well folks, that's all I've got for today. I hope that you don't have any emergencies for quite a while. Next week, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me.